crase

Etymology
From.

Noun

 * 1)  crasis,  in Ancient Greek

Noun

 * 1) crasis:
 * 2) assimilation of sounds of two identical vowels, throughout the evolution process of a language
 * 3)  name given to the process of the contraction of  +, that is, a merge (assimilation) of the Portuguese preposition  + the article
 * 4)  grave accent

Usage notes

 * An example of diachronic crasis is the 🇨🇬 word, which has become, with time, the word . Compare.
 * The article a has feminine gender in Portuguese. Accordingly, both it and the contraction à are used only before feminine words. The translation of à into English, hence, is to the. It is a common mistake for people to write "a" when they should write "à" and vice-versa.